


From The Woods

by Brighid



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU Season Four, AU post season four, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, character death offscreen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 18:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10314008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: There is a wolf in the woods.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [billtheradish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/billtheradish/gifts), [DiscontentedWinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/gifts), [sanam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanam/gifts).



There is a wolf in the woods, for the first time in a generation. The huntsmen find its spoor the first night after the town hears its howling, and the daughter of that house boasts in the village square that she will have a new fur hood for winter. She is tall and fair and fierce and she has ranged far and wide to kill all manner of beasts. There is a vicious light in her eye when she talks of killing the wolf, and she touches her bow lovingly as she polishes the wood. 

She is a little in love with Death, and she courts him with frequent sacrifice, thinks the watchman’s son one day as he watches her. The sharpness of her teeth, the wildness in her voice disquiets him. He averts his gaze and continues onwards to the gaol to deliver to his father the carefully wrapped meat and cheese and bread in the basket he uses to bring him dinner each afternoon. Perhaps, the boy thinks, perhaps I will find the wolf first.

And do what with him, Mietek? a quiet voice inside asks, one that sounds very like his dead mother’s and the boy has no answer. Not yet. But he will. Finding answers runs in his blood as much as violence lives in the heart of the huntsman’s daughter. 

)0(

In the days after Peter Hale burned for the third and final time, Derek Hale took to four feet and disappeared into the woods. Which, Stiles reflects, is what Derek did. He left after the Alpha pack, it made sense he’d leave after Mexico. He’d wondered if this time Derek would leave for good, but there is a wolf in the woods of Beacon Hills for the first time in a century, so he guesses maybe it was just Derek taking the time to process that he’d had to kill his uncle. Again.

It takes Stiles over a month to go into the woods after Derek. The first couple of weeks he’d been in hospital with a catheter and drainage tubes and a lot of stitches and staples holding together everything Peter Hale had tried so hard to carve apart. The next couple of weeks he’d been home without the catheter and tubes but it hurt too much too move. The days after that were probably because he was still pissed about the whole fucking thing, especially the part with nobody believing him that Peter had gone fucking loup garou again. Malia had fucking dumped him over it, and Scott had looked disappointed in him and Derek had … Derek had …

Also, it still mostly hurt to move. 

But after a month of Derek playing the lead in a Jack London novel the Argent cousins, who had moved in with Chris when he’d come back from France, have taken to muttering things like “feral” and “lost” and Scott is talking about going out there and trying to alpha Derek back into two feet like he had with Malia and just … no. So Stiles walks stiffly out to his Jeep and drives to the In and Out three highway exits down and gets a bag full of Derek’s usual and a couple of sides of fries and heads for the clearing where the Hale house used to be.

If you’re gonna catch a werewolf, you have to bait the trap right.

)0(

The watchman’s son takes his time to watch the woods and track the beast and soon realizes that the wolf is canny, leaving just enough evidence and no more. It is not a witless beast, and it will not be easy prey for the huntsmen, no matter what they might say. So one spring night, when the woods are full of hunters and the watchman is keeping his rounds, the boy packs meat and cheese and bread into his basket along with a book of fables, wraps the red blanket his late mother had made him around his shoulders and walks out to sit on the stump that marks the border between their land and the edge of the forest that surrounds the town. He sets the basket by his feet, lights a single tallow candle and drips enough wax to fix it on the stump beside him. Once it is burning steadily he pulls the book out and begins to read the tales to the evening air. He reads until his voice is hoarse, and when he stops at last to pull out the beer in the basket to wet his throat, there is a wolf sitting in the shadows of the trees.

It is a huge beast; its shoulder would easily come to his, the boy thinks. It regards him steadily with impossibly bright blue eyes, and to the boy they seem both piercing and sad. “I have a fine roast beef in here,” he says at last, carefully setting the book down and reaching into the basket. He holds a thick slice aloft and the wolf snorts softly. “You are not the wolf of the fabulist, I think, and I am no lamb. Let us share a bit of beef, and good beer, and we shall debate the representation of wolves in the stories of men,” the watchman’s son says softly. “You may call me Mietek.”

The wolf snorts again, then stands and begins to walk towards him. 

)0(

Stiles is almost done his fries by the time Derek skulks into the clearing where Scott and Kira had left the memorial bench they’d all chipped in for. “Heeeey, Derek,” Stiles calls out, waggling a burger at him. “No mayo, truly ungodly amounts of mustard, just like you like, you heathen.” Derek snaps it down in two bites, then noses into the bag resting on the bench to get his onion rings. “Sacha and Enzo think you’ve gone all huff and puff and are making plans to catch you for public safety and the greater good. Time to put on your big boy pants. Which are in the back of my jeep, by the way.” He reaches out and scruffs Derek gently, lets his fingers untangle and pluck a couple of burrs that Derek obviously couldn’t reach. “I’m not mad anymore,” Stiles says. “I mean, I’ll probably say I told you so a lot, but Peter was very good at pretending not to be crazy pants. Or, you know, not axe murderer crazy pants as opposed to his usual smarmy asshole crazy pants, which everyone was used to.” Stiles rubs ruefully at his belly with his free hand. “My bad luck to be the “meddling kid” when you were busy learning to be Scooby Doo.” 

Derek whines and presses his head into the broad flat of Stiles’ palm. It’s a thin, mournful noise and it turns Stiles’ little lie about not being mad into the truth because the grief in the noise is palpable. “You’ve gotten a lot better at listening,” Stiles tells him. “That’s part of the reason I was so pissed. I thought we were buddies, that we had each other’s backs when the shit went down. That’s why I told you about how fucking shifty he was acting.” Stiles bends down a little, still stiff and awkward, and knocks his skull against Derek’s. “But I know now you had other shit going down. So I forgive you. And if you go put on the really awesome pants I brought you I’ll drive you back to my place and you can do the pain drain thingy and we can watch my bootleg MST3K rips.” 

There is a feeling, like a soft implosion of air and then Derek is standing in front of Stiles, helping him straighten. He reaches under Stiles’ shirt, lifts it slightly and ignores Stiles’ attempts to bat his hands away. “No, no, Bad Touch Wolf! Bad Touch!” Stiles cries even as Derek presses his palm over the red, ridged lines that Peter’s claws left over Stiles belly and chest. 

“I’m not watching MST3K with you,” Derek says, his voice rusty and quiet, his eyes fixed on the dark lines snaking up his arm. “But I’ll watch Netflix if I get to pick, and I’ll even make you dinner.” 

“Sounds great. But first, pants,” Stiles says pointedly. 

)0(

When the watchman arrives home it is to find his son drinking beer in their small house with a dark haired young man, who is wearing the patched pair of breeches Mietek gardens in and the old red blanket that had graced the boy’s childhood cot, and not a stitch more. The watchman feels as though he should be surprised, but somehow, he is not.

“Father, allow me to present to you my good friend Derrick, born in England, late of Gevaudan. He lost his uncle there,” the watchman’s son explains carefully, his brown eyes beseeching even as the dark haired boy looks half-ready to run into the night, ill-fitting breeches and all. 

The watchman knows of the goings on in the town to the south, and of the Argents, especially their daughter. He sighs and rubs his face with both hands. “Welcome to my home, young wolf. You will get used to my son. He takes after his mother.”

)0(

Beginnings and Endings, both.

**Author's Note:**

> I took season four a little AU. I thought the whole assassination thing, uh, clunky. And if there were no assassins, then Stiles might have more time to figure out Peter's nefariousness. And if Peter is trying to kill people, well ... it would make sense to put him down, yes? So, an Au season five.


End file.
